


The House

by CynaraM



Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Gen, Humour, Pre-Canon, Shorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 22:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynaraM/pseuds/CynaraM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“…he had been rather fond of his herbaceous border."</p><p>The Victorian townhouse sat in a valley far from where it had been built.  It heard strange echoes inside itself and drowsed in the warm herb-scented breeze.  Its rooms dreamed of the Cabals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The House

**Attic**  
In his lab, Cabal nodded sharply, approving his own work. Progress. It was slow but sure, branching down dead ends and false starts but always one branch led on to the next experiment, the next idea, the next test batch. He allowed himself a moment's pause; a stretch, a sigh, a shake of his head, and he bent to his workbench again.

**Master bedroom**  
Liese Cabal folded the last of her husband's tweed jackets into the box. He had been so proud of his English clothes, his English house, his English life. Now what was left, besides a house with too many rooms? Only she was left, and a man who had been her son. He haunted the place: barely home, barely speaking, barely looking her in the eye.

If they had stayed in Hessen, would Gottfried still be alive? Would Horst? Would Johannes have been different? Liese had loved the child like her own daughter, but if Johannes had never seen her, the Cabals might have been a family still. "Damn her" whispered Liese in German. "And damn you, my love, for bringing us here."

**Second bedroom**  
Johannes sat in Horst's room and listened for his brother's step on the stair. He sat on the floor, leaning against the side of the bed. It would infuriate Horst if he knew his little brother was trespassing again, which was Johannes' first and best reason for being there. Also, Horst was a mystery, and Johannes liked to look at his things: the sports prizes, love letters, and adventure novels. He was an alien anthropologist examining artifacts that might give clues to a way of life inconceivably different from his own. Lastly (and least realized) he felt peaceful here in an uncomplicated way that could never be true in Horst's actual, loathed, presence. Johannes was wondering if Horst had written in his journal since the last time he checked when a quick footstep sounded on alternate stairs and all was lost.

**Third bedroom**  
Mama had let him borrow a short, sharp kitchen knife and some of her sewing pins (big ones, to be counted carefully before and after) and Papa's stamp tweezers for the dissection. Papa had shot this pheasant and six others yesterday on a country estate, and Mama said Johannes might have one bird to operate on before Martha got it for making a terrine. He'd made an operating surface from a card table and scrubbed his hands and arms carefully. He parted the feathers and paused, in fear and awe, before making the first careful incision.

**Bathroom**  
Cabal and Leonie stood at bay in the bathtub, repelling the rising tide of toads. Cabal struck out with a plunger as Leonie knotted bath sheets and Cabal's bathrobe into a kind of rope. "This is all your fault" Cabal spat venomously, swatting at a warty, leaping creature with murder in its bulbous eyes. Leonie snorted but put her head down and kept knotting. 

**Kitchen**  
Cabal ate absentmindedly at the kitchen table. It was a dark, utilitarian space, designed and built in a period when no person of any consequence to an architect was going to work in it, so why bother with decent windows, a sink at a comfortable height, or modern lighting? Cabal read a thick book by the light of an oil lamp and chewed something-tinned-on-toast without much noticing what it was. 

**Parlour**  
Johannes Cabal lay on the settee in a new suit and felt his world make itself anew. He watched new constellations form and galaxies wheel on the parlour ceiling as his head spun and he imagined a dozen shining futures with her. Everything would change. He wondered if he could write poetry. He wondered when they could be married. 

His family would be so happy, he thought, and started to make a face, then paused - no, that thought made him happy, too, tonight. How strange. His father would embrace her and call her “an English rose” and his mother would laugh and embrace her too. Horst… better not think of Horst. Perhaps Horst would leave to continue his studies. In Canada. And catch a disfiguring disease in the colonies. No, she loved him, had chosen him, and Horst was no threat. 

The stars rearranged themselves for Johannes Cabal; his life opened up before him and he watched it, inebriated. 

**Cellar**  
Cabal sat in the cellar in a black suit, blond head in his hands, and did not weep. All day, they had come and gone, and all day he had sat wooden-faced, refusing their useless consolations, their hypocritical pity. He would share nothing with them. Nothing. Tears would mean he had lost her. 

He had to get her out of the ground, out of the wooden box her mother had wept over and her brothers had carried, away from the grave where she surely did not belong. No-one else could see what had to be done. Cabal’s tears soaked his black gloves in the cellar. He must plan. He must plan. 

**Hidden lab**  
Cabal woke, cold. The train had no insulation, and his bunk never held the heat… no, he thought, massively relieved. He was off the verdammt train forever. 

He was home, and, he realized, sleeping on the floor of the hidden lab. He hadn’t done that in some time. He picked himself up, sore from a long, deep, unmoving sleep in the chill, found a soft cloth, and polished the thick glass slab that separated them. He had left the lights on while he slept, her calm, remote face below him. 

Today began a new era: work, with the hope of success. He had the power. He had his soul. It was a race now, a slow race in which no corner could be cut. First, he thought, a bicycle ride to the grocer's, then perfect resurrection. He looked at her, thought a few words, and sealed her into safety once more. 

****Garden**  
** “You will leave the primroses alone or I will drown you in iron filings, pixie.”  
Thin voices peeped from the foliage. “The garden is ours, Johannes Cabal. We will make our own plantings.”  
“The garden is mine. I simply allow you to live in it. I have no objection to your experimentation, but you will leave my herbaceous border alone or there will be consequences you cannot ignore.”  
A soprano whisper came from the undergrowth. “Empty threats.” Fay giggles followed.  
Cabal sighed. One could not back down and hope to keep them in any kind of order. Shrugging, he returned to the house for the shotgun he had earlier loaded with specially-prepared shells. They would lacerate the dahlias, but it couldn’t be helped. 


End file.
